Tag Archives: Poetry

So, having all read the poem, tell me what is verse in Marianne Moore’s poem “Poetry”? And what is poetic about it? She must have asked herself the same question, because when she reprinted the poem in her Complete poems, she revised it thus:

Poetry

I, too, dislike it.**Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in**it after all, a place for the genuine.[i]

The revisions emphasize concision.

But at what cost? What is lost? Well, for one, two of the most famous phrases in Moore’s corpus, if not the corpus of 20th-century poetry: “beyond all this fiddle” and “imaginary gardens with real toads in them”.

The only structural element I can find in the original poem, the one published in 1920, is in the Continue Reading →

I did not contribute a post from “in verse” to Dawning of a Brighter Day for two simple reasons, and one complex one. The first simple reason is that I had spinal fusion surgery on the 29th of March to correct pinched nerves. I was therefore in the hospital, cut off from my usual sources of information, when Jonathan Langford died on the 31st of March. I had posted late in March, on Monday the 26th (although the entry is date-stamped Tuesday the 27th at 01:37) because that entry was a hard one for me to finish.

I was not released from the hospital until April 6th, due to complications. And I couldn’t really sit at the computer for a week or so after, and then only in short spurts. So I didn’t know that Jonathan Langford had died until I noticed that I had received no reminder from him in April to post punctually on the 27th. I liked receiving his kind reminders and composing clever replies, such as “I’m on it like white on snow,” to which his replies, when he made them, were never less than pleasant, no matter how much scorn I deserved.

**I have received some encouragement for continuing my contributions, such as they are, to “the conversation,” maybe by pulling out for further discussion small “nuggets” from what I have submitted before, to bide time while I prepare to say something intelligent about the French poets who created part of the remote C19 and early C20 context of Joseph Smith’s work. So, how about this. I imagine a few of my readers—or my readers, who are few—to be sitting with me at a circular table in a quiet corner of a small café on the Left Bank of the Provo River, a café that serves only Word of Wisdom – approved beverages, sipping our Sutter Home Fré wine (I hope that’s approved; I drink quite a lot of it—antioxidants, you know; also O’Doul’s, which my adult children, who drink Diet Coke and Mountain Dew, call “Bishop’s Beer”) and shooting the breeze about poetry and MoLit. I put before you for comparison and contrast the following two passages from two different authors. What do we see here? I invite observations and thoughts. Continue Reading →

My interview for this month kind of fell through, so it’s just me right now.

As I was trying to think about what to write, what I thought would be relevant or helpful, and related to the posts I’ve been doing these last few months, one idea kept coming to mind.

How do we make ourselves and our art accessible?

I feel that one problem with literary writing is forgetting the audience. I suppose writing can just be for itself; the exercise of the art, the self-expression. But to me, writing is both an expression and a connection…. like an arrow with a line shot–you’ve got a target in mind, and that target will pull your writing taut.

For instance, anti-novels, along the line of Samuel Beckett. Has anyone here ever tried to read his triad Molloy, Malone Dies, the Unnamable? I tried. I got about halfway through Malone Dies through sheer determination. And yes, the writing is evocative, and turns my mind around in all kinds of twisty ways, and so obviously Beckett is a consummate writer.

But to what end?

Not to say that art shouldn’t require some effort in its consumption and interpretation. A *lot* of effort, sometimes. That effort, to access a piece of art, can bring so much more depth of understanding of a piece once you’ve arrived at understanding, interpretation. Like a Urim-and-Thummim, almost…. you can look through a piece of art as a window into something wider and deeper. Continue Reading →

Valerie and I have been travelling through Canada, crossing the border at the Port of Roosville, north of Eureka, Montana, and driving through Kootenay, Banff and Jasper National Parks for most of a week. On our last day in Jasper, we stopped at two waterfalls, Sunwapta Falls on the Sunwapta River, and Athabasca Falls on the Athabasca River. The Sunwapta is fed by the Athabasca Glacier[i] , and eventually flows into the Athabasca, which is fed by the Columbia Glacier[ii]. Both glaciers are part of the now much diminished Columbia Icefield in the park[iii].

The falls are fascinating because both rivers, which are wide, swift, cold and turbulent, squeeze through rock crevasses which seem far too narrow to admit the volume of water passing through them. At Sunwapta, for example, the massive rock-flour river plunges through a gorge maybe 15 feet wide, at least 30 feet below a bridge spanning the gorge.

This is a picture of the head of Sunwapta falls, and it is impressive enough that a river that wide and turbulent is plunging into this gorge. It could be a very wide but shallow river. This, however, is the wide part of the gorge, and it was impossible for me to determine how deeply the river has cut into the rock. But the next photograph is the narrow part of the gorge: Continue Reading →

In rural Lemhi County, fifth and sixth graders were taught together in the same classroom by the same teacher, Mr. Harris. In 1973, there might have been around twenty-five total fifth and sixth graders. The grades were segregated to two sides of the classroom. The grades had their own appropriate assignments for basic subjects, but some interchange existed, to the good of all. For example, the read-aloud, always held after lunch and always looked forward to with eagerness, was of course shared by all students.

Lists are fun usually because they are so subjective and arbitrary. The other day I was distracting myself from more “serious” work by thinking about the most important pre-Manifesto Mormon literary writers and posting the top five to my Tumblr page.

Bishop Whitney was probably the best and most ambitious Mormon poet of the nineteenth century—but his “Home Literature” sermon, which is still the starting point of most discussions on Mormon literature, is what places him so high on the list.

The P. in Parley P. Pratt should stand for “prolific.” He wrote poetry, fiction, and drama in addition to sermons and missionary tracts. Why doesn’t he rank higher on the list? While his literary output was significant, he is remembered today as an early theologian, missionary, and martyr. Aside from a few hymns, his literary work–like his long poem The Millennium—is forgotten…

Phelps wrote “The Spirit of God” and other memorable hymns of the restoration (which, unlike Pratt’s hymns, we still regularly sing), but he also edited theEvening and Morning Star, the first periodical to publish Mormon literature. Even though he wasn’t as prolific as Pratt, is it fair to say that W. W. Phelps invented Mormon literature?

No one remembers John Lyon anymore, which is unfortunate. A Scottish poet of real literary talent, Lyon provided a model for Mormon artists when he consecrated the profits of his poetry collection The Harp of Zionto the Perpetual Emigrating Fund. His writings, like Nephi Anderson’s a generation later, also offered an early international view of Mormonism—which remains relevant today as Mormonism continues to globalize.

William Blake was Milton’s son. But it was no easy birth. In his fine article on Milton’s prosody, John Creaser describes how Milton was able to work so well within the conventions of blank verse. Creaser begins by summarizing the description by Derek Attridge of “the prevailing norms” of verse rhythm in English:

Fundamental to the rhythm of English speech are (1) isochrony — the tendency, allowing for sense “breathings,” to perceive stressed syllables as falling at equal intervals of time; and (2) duple movement — the tendency for stressed and unstressed syllables to alternate.[i]

These are our Anglo-Saxon heritage, the stresses of our Germanic past, lingering in English only in the rhythms of our speech, reflecting the stripping away of most inflections in our grammar, yet the retention of that old 4-beat prosody irrespective of syllable counts. Of the iambic foot, Creaser describes Attridge as concluding that “in lines of any rhythmic complexity, the foot cannot be felt as a unit.”[ii] This is what makes the later Shakespeare plays so wonderfully adaptive to the actor’s voice. I would argue Continue Reading →

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The Association for Mormon Letters will present two lifetime achievement awards at the Mormon Scholars in the Humanities Conference Banquet on March 23, held at the BYU Skyroom Restaurant, 6:30-8:30 pm. Lavina Fielding Anderson will be presented with the Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters, and Robert Kirby will be presented with the Association for Mormon Letters Lifetime Achievement Award. Both authors will be attending. There will also be one panel dedicated to each awardee as part of the MSH Conference, held in the afternoon of March 23, before the award ceremony. associationmormonletters.org/blog/2018/03/lifetime-achievement-awards-lavina-fielding-anderson-an...... See MoreSee Less

Kim Östman reviews Hans H Mattsson and Christina Andersson Hanke's memoir, “Sökte sanning – fann tvivel” (Sought Truth, Found Doubt). Mattsson is a former member of the Third Quorum of the Seventy, who has been public with his transition away from belief in Mormonism. "Latter-day Saint life and faith is portrayed with great skill throughout the book, and nobody is portrayed flippantly or vindictively. Despite comments that remind the reader of the book’s ultimate message, its tone is respectful throughout, and it is abundantly clear that the authors have a place in their hearts for their former faith and their experiences within it. Mr. Mattsson appears to have arrived at a healthy vantage point from which to evaluate his life journey, which is demonstrated especially in the epilogue, written in first-person style." associationmormonletters.org/blog/reviews/current-reviews/mattsson-and-hanke-sokte-sanning-fans-t...... See MoreSee Less

Segullah interviews Susan Howe. "In my student days, I was repeatedly warned against didactic poetry, poetry whose purpose is to convince the reader of something. I still believe that to be a good warning; a didactic purpose keeps a poem from being art and reduces it to a kind of propaganda. On the other hand, the patriarchal literary establishment has, during my generation and earlier, prevented women from examining their own experience by calling women’s perspectives limited and partial, which of course they are, just as men’s perspectives are limited and partial. As a student I had to learn to read with a male perspective; now men also have to learn to read with a female perspective. I think this is altogether admirable and creates far greater opportunities for men and women to understand each other. I was also taught that if you know the end of your poem when you begin to write it, it’s already a dead poem, and I believe that’s also true. Poems are about exploring, examining, and learning where the poem wants to go, not deciding that beforehand. I hope that’s evident in my poems, particularly when I examine such subjects as Mother in Heaven." segullah.org/daily-special/interview-featured-writer-susan-elizabeth-howe/... See MoreSee Less